Clearing your head

There are any number of ways in which we beat ourselves up, but knowing what they are means we are better placed to push back, life coach Jan Aitken says.

Can you recall an incident in your life in which something you did didn't quite go according to plan ... can you remember what you said to yourself about it?

Unfortunately the chances are your self-talk wasn't affirming, probably not even the least bit positive.

The ugly truth is we can be, and often are, incredibly hard on ourselves.

However, our thoughts and self-talk have a huge impact on how we view ourselves and how we see the world around us.

If you tell someone something for long enough eventually they'll believe it.

If we tell ourselves something for long enough eventually we'll believe it too: whether it's good, bad or even patently untrue.

David Burn, in his book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, is credited with popularising the 10 most common ways our thoughts and negative self-talk can hijack us.

They've become known as the 10 cognitive distortions, or more simply put: 10 ways our thinking can be disordered.

Over the next couple of columns I thought we could take a look at the 10 distortions and what we can do about them.

The aim is to help you recognise when you are employing them in your thinking and how to lessen their impact.

Using these cognitive distortions can really bend our heads as what we tell ourselves can make us depressed, anxious, guilty, fearful or angry and send us into the spiral of negative thinking.

The following words are red flags that may indicate you might be using some or many of these distortions: watch out for "have to'' "must'' "always'' "never'' "should'' "shouldn't'' and "ought''.

Let's take a look at the first four distortions.

1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING

You see things in black-and-white categories.

If you are tied up with this distortion you're likely to think that anything short of perfect is a total failure and therefore you're a total failure.

There's no middle ground.

For example if you don't get the perfect mark for an assignment, a perfect job appraisal, or finish the impossibly long to-do list you've written then you feel as if you've failed.

If you're on a diet and you eat a biscuit you throw your hands up in the air and proceed to eat the entire packet because you've ruined your diet anyway.

To counter this cognitive distortion, start with a dose of self compassion.

Then turn the thought around by focusing on what you did achieve: I got a B+, my boss said I had improved on XYZ and do ABC really well, or focus on what you did get done.

2. OVERGENERALISATION

When this distortion gets hold you see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern.

If one thing goes wrong you reach the conclusion that everything will always go wrong.

Or, if something unpleasant happens, you conclude that it will happen over and over again.

Perhaps you've met up with a friend who wasn't as attentive as usual, maybe they were a bit distracted.

Instead of treating it as a single unpleasant experience (after all, they may have been having a really rough day), you jump to the conclusion that they are not really interested in you any more.

This assumption could result in a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety; unnecessary because, at subsequent catch-ups, things were back to "normal''.

To counter overgeneralisation, remind yourself that because an experience is unpleasant or doesn't live up to your expectations once doesn't mean it will always be that way.

It's just your mind making a false assumption based on one isolated experience.

3. MENTAL FILTER

You pick out a single negative detail or disappointment and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolours the entire glass of water.

Repeatedly doing this can lead to a bleak vision of reality.

Most of us will experience a mixture of positives and negatives in life but applying a negative mental filter will make it nearly impossible to see any of the positives.

To counter this distortion, focus on the positive aspects of your experiences.

However, if things haven't gone well and you experience uncomfortable emotions, perhaps you feel sad or angry, that's OK: treat yourself with compassion.

Try repeating a phrase that speaks directly to your disappointment by acknowledging what hurts and reminding yourself that it won't necessarily always be like that.

4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE

You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count'' for some reason or another.

In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contrary to reality.

By now the cognitive distortions may be starting to sound similar, but there are some subtle differences.

When you disqualify the positive, you're not just focusing on the negatives (by ignoring the positives as you do in mental filtering) but you take it one step further and actively transform neutral or positive experiences into negative ones.

Here's an example.

You get a friendly message on your voicemail from someone you haven't heard from in a long time. Instead of feeling good about it, you turn it into a negative experience: "They only called me because they felt obligated to''.

In such situations Zen monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh suggests we ask ourselves, "Am I sure?''.

So ask yourself, "am I sure they called out of obligation?''. Chances are, you're not!

So, what do you say to yourself? Do you use any of these distortions? What sort of effect do you think they have on you?

Over the next two weeks try to be aware of what you say to yourself when things aren't quite turning out as you expected.

Be kind to yourself and make a start at countering any cognitive distortions that pop up.

We'll look at the remaining six distortions in my next column.

For a refresher on self-compassion, expectations and compassion, check the Fit for Life Coaching blogs www.fitforlifecoaches.co.nz/blog/